Trillion Dollar Coach Chapter 1: The Caddie and the ceo

Trillion Dollar Coach
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skills of management can be delegated, but not coaching. This is ultimately what Bill taught us. The 
path to success in a fast-moving, highly competitive, technology-driven business world is to form 
high-performing teams and give them the resources and freedom to do great things. An essential 
component of high-performing teams is a leader who is both a savvy manager and a caring coach. 
Bill Campbell was the best there ever was.
If you are a manager, executive, or any other kind of leader of teams, in any kind of business or 
organization, you can be more effective and help your team perform better (and be happier) by 
becoming the coach of that team. Bill’s principles have helped us and many others do that; we 
believe they can help you, too.
Chapter 2: Your Title Makes You a Manager; Your People Make You a Leader
To Bill, being an executive of a successful company is all about creating operational excellence. 
As a manager and CEO, Bill was very good at making sure his teams delivered. He brought people 
together and created a strong team culture, but never lost sight of the fact that results mattered, and 
that they were a direct result of good management. “You have to think about how you’re going to 
run a meeting,” he told a group of Googlers in a management seminar, “how you’re going to run an 
operations review. You’ve got to be able to look at someone in a one-on-one and know how to help 
them course correct. People who are successful run their companies well. They have good processes, 
they make sure their people are accountable, they know how to hire great people, how to evaluate 
them and give them feedback, and they pay them well.”
Silicon Valley people can get off track, chasing other goals beyond running a good operation. Bill 
was very good at making sure that it’s a results-oriented game. We’re going to come together to 
have a team culture, but it’s to achieve results. Research backs Bill up on this point. A comprehensive 
2017 study on manufacturing plants across the United States found that the ones that adopted 
performance-oriented management techniques, such as monitoring, targeting, and incentives, 
performed much better than other plants. Good management practices were as important as R&D 
and IT investments and worker skill level. Good management matters in creative endeavors as well. 
A 2012 study showed that in the video game industry, strong middle management accounted for 22 
percent of the variance in revenue, while game creative design accounted for only 7 percent.
Bill felt that leadership was something that evolved as a result of management excellence. “How do 
you bring people around and help them flourish in your environment? It’s not by being a dictator. It’s 
not by telling them what the hell to do. It’s making sure that they feel valued by being in the room 
with you. Listen. Pay attention. This is what great managers do.”
People are the foundation of any company’s success. The primary job of each manager is to help 
people be more effective in their job and to grow and develop. We have great people who want to do 

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